Piracy is defined as "unauthorized duplication on a commercial scale of copyrighted work with the intention to defraud the rights holder." [ The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council, National Academy Press, p. 26.] By this definition, software piracy would be large-scale, unauthorized duplication of copyrighted software with the intent to defraud the copyright holder of his/her royalties. Music piracy is the large-scale, unauthorized duplication of recorded music with the intent to defraud the copyright holder of his/her royalties; this includes the composers, lyricists and performing artists.
Although this definition would not apply to an individual making unauthorized copies of copyrighted works for their own use, individuals making unauthorized copies of copyrighted works are still guilty of copyright infringement.
Early calculating devices include the abacus (dating to the 6th century B.C.E. in China), Schickard's mechanical adder (1623), Pascal's mechanical adder (1643), Leibnitz's mechanical calculator which could multiply and divide (1673), and Oughted's slide rule (1621).
Charles Babbage proposed the analytical engine in the early 1800s, a mechanical predecessor of the digital computer, which included store (memory) and mill (equivalent to the modern processor). Babbage's machine was never finished due to lack of funds and the great expense of manufacturing the precision parts that he needed. The portions of the analytical engine that were finished worked as Babbage designed them.
Immediate before, during and after World War II, there were several efforts to build digital electronic computers, including the ABC (Atanosoff Berry Computer at the University of Iowa), ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator, at the University of Pennsylvania), and the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer, also at Penn).
Eckert and Mauchly left Penn to build the Univac (the first commercial computer). In 1948, IBM entered the computer field, which they eventually dominated. Later, as small computers became popular, they introduced the MS-DOS-based Personal Computer, which revolutionized the entire computer industry.
Formal logic dates back at least to the days of Aristotle, Pythagoras and Euclid. Newton and Leibnitz invented calculus and formaliezed methods for performed calculations (known as algorithms).
Early computers had to have their sequences of instructions (later called programs) hardwired). The EDVAC was the first computer to store instructions in the same manner in which data was stored.
Programming computers was originally done in machine language, the set of 1s and 0s that are stored in a computer's memory. Because programming in machine language was extremely difficult to do without making many errors, programmers started using mnemonic codes to represent machine language instructions, e.g., ADD for the addition instruction, etc. Eventually programs were written that translated these mnemonics into machine language programs. Because they assembled the program that was to be run, they were called assemblers.
Eventually higher languages, such as FORTRAN, COBOL and LISP came into existence, which simplified the task of programming. But software still remains more expensive to produce that the hardware on which it runs.
Copyrights and patents originate in intellectual property law which is based on Article I, Section 8 Clause 8: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
Copyrights are designed to protect the expression of a particular idea. They originally protected books, maps and charts, but the copyright law was eventually amended to protect engravings and prints, musical composition, photographs, motion pictures, and sound recording. Although the US Copyright office start accepting software for copyright, federal law did not actually recognize copyrights applying to software until 1980 with the passage of the Computer Software Copyright Act.
Any original work can be copyrighted by its creator if it has been fixed in a "tangible medium" that can be perceived, experienced or understood by others. It does not have to be "published." In theory, a work is copyrighted as soon as it is fixed in a tangible medium, but any published work should contain a copyright notice consisting of the word "Copyright" (or the symbol © ), the author's name and the year of first publication. While it is not required to register it with the Copyright Office, it provides extra protection against infringement.
A copyright is good for the life of the author plus 50 years, unless the author is performing work for hire, in which the copyright is owned by the employer and is good for 75 years after publication or 100 years after creation (which expires first).
The major exception to copyright is the "fair use", which usually applies to new reporting, commentary and criticism, academic use in research and teaching and parody. But fair use is usually limited to small portions, anywhere from a paragraph to a page.
Patents are designed to protect inventions. The patent law states: Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.[35 U.S.C. 101]
Patent law also requires that the invention be non-obvious, which is defined by the Patent Law A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. [35 U.S.C. 103]
The process of obtaining a patent is much more difficult than obtaining a copyright. If two people apply for a patent based on the same concept, the date of first invention determines who gets the patents. As a result, inventors and research scientists and engineers keep meticulous lab notebooks to document when and how they came by their discoveries.
The phrase "patent pending" on a product carries no legal rights to its developer; it is a warning that there is a patent application and this product may receive patent protection. A developer receiving a patent receives a document indicating the patent number and has the exclusive rights to the invention for a period currently set at twenty years. The patent holder may use these rights (making and selling the invention) or can license it out or sell it to someone else. Most employers are assigned patent rights of their employees by contractual agreement.
Trade secrets are usually governed by agreements. For legal protection, it is necessary
Companies revealing trade secrets only do so under nondisclosure agreements. These are enforceable by the courts. There is no limit on how long they remain in effect. This includes:
We maintain this free software definition to show clearly what must be true about a particular software program for it to be considered free software.
"Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of ``free'' as in ``free speech,'' not as in ``free beer.''
Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:
A program is free software if users have all of these freedoms. Thus, you should be free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere. Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission.
You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.
The freedom to use a program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job, and without being required to communicate subsequently with the developer or any other specific entity.
The freedom to redistribute copies must include binary or executable forms of the program, as well as source code, for both modified and unmodified versions. (Distributing programs in runnable form is necessary for conveniently installable free operating systems.) It is ok if there is no way to produce a binary or executable form for a certain program (since some languages don't support that feature), but you must have the freedom to redistribute such forms should you find or develop a way to make them.
In order for the freedoms to make changes, and to publish improved versions, to be meaningful, you must have access to the source code of the program. Therefore, accessibility of source code is a necessary condition for free software.
In order for these freedoms to be real, they must be irrevocable as long as you do nothing wrong; if the developer of the software has the power to revoke the license, without your doing anything to give cause, the software is not free.
[http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html]